DACC board votes to resume construction

The Delaware Area Career Center board of education voted to resume the consolidation project at its meeting Thursday and learned the project will cost an additional $2.75 million after the construction was delayed for several months.

The DACC broke ground on the $45 million project to consolidate all of its programs into a 224,774 square-foot addition to the South Campus in October 2016, but learned in January that the renewal levy passed by Delaware County voters in 2015 did not appear on the ballot for 1,026 voters in Franklin, Marion, Morrow, and Union counties and the Ohio Department of Taxation refused to certify the levy.

The board of education then made plans to pause construction when the new addition at South Campus was deemed structurally sound and planned to resume construction after a levy replacing the 2015 had been certified by the Delaware County Board of Elections. The board voted to pause the construction in May.

At the meeting on Thursday, the board heard a report about construction from Ted Kelleher, the project manager for Elford Construction.

“There are obviously some delay costs,” Kelleher said. “It’s about $2.75 million. That is obviously a large number, but there’s a lot in there.”

Kelleher said the costs included staffing, work to secure and enclose the construction project, storage, materials, and labor costs. He said all of the previous sub-contractors will be returning to the job.

“Our sub-contractors have been great as well,” Kelleher said. “Every one of them stayed involved and were incredibly patient. They’ve been great to work with. They were all very reasonable on costs that came from this delay.”

Ed Bischoff, a board member from ESC of Central Ohio, praised Elford for keeping the extra costs under $3 million and said it was “tremendous.”

“[It’s about] really being thorough and being good stewards of the taxpayer money to make sure the costs we submitted were legitimate and real and not just someone looking to make a buck off a school district that got put in an unfortunate situation,” Kelleher said.

Kelleher said the plan is to complete the new addition at the South Campus first and move the south programs into those facilities while crews renovate the current South Campus. The north programs will move to the consolidated campus in August 2019.

“We are personally really excited to be back here starting this project up again,” Kelleher said.